Graphics ji 1 Magazine ^^^^^^H 1 Newspaper ■ ^^H Mazapaper Tiiblnid H REPORT 1 JOURNAL ^^B Magtab ^H CflrmoG H Brochure l=I.YI=l? H Digitized by the Internet Arcliive in 2012 littp://archive.org/details/masteringgraphicOOwliit Mastering Graphics NEWSLETTER Magazine Newspaper (tMagapaper REPORT Magtab l=I.YI=R Tabloid JOURNAL CffTRLOG Brochure Design! dnd production made easy Jan V White R. R. Bowker Company, New York and London, 1983 Published by R. R. Bowker a division of Reed Publishing (USA) Inc. Copyright © 1983 by |an V. White All rights reserved Printed and bound in the United States of America Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of R. R. Bowker, 245 West 17 Street, New York, NY 10011. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data White, Ian v., 1928- Mastermg graphics. Includes index. 1. Graphic arts. 2. Printing, Practical. i. Newsletters. 4. House organs. 5. PamphI Design. I. Title Z253.W47 1983 686.2 83-60 ISBN 0-83.52-1704-3 CONTENTS Introduction x Which will you choose: newsletter, magazine, magapaper, magtab, or tabloid? XIV Newsletters 2 Magazines 3 Magapapers, magtabs, and tabloids 8 2 Make the publication's name its hallmark 14 The difference between logo, nameplate, flag, and masthead 14 Where to put your name on the page 15 How to make the name impossible to miss 1 5 Your name/your self: why you ought to personalize it 20 How to make the name look different 21 Enriching the name's effectiveness with color 24 How to make your own special logo 25 How to achieve the personalized look once the name is in type 27 3 How to make the most of typewriter "typography" 28 Typewriter type, strike-on type, cold type: what they are 29 How long should typewritten lines be? 30 Should you use ragged-right or justified typewriter typing? 31 How to reduce the scale of typewriter type 31 Enlarging the paste-up to accommodate reduced typewriting 34 The problem of creating emphasis in typewritten copy 34 How to make headlines using your typewriter 35 How to make sideheads on your typewriter 37 How to make lists on your typewriter 38 Big initials added to typewritten copy 40 How to handle standing art with typewriters 41 Using type effectively 42 Tone-of-voice typography 42 What face to use? 44 The confusion about names of typefaces 44 Preparing copy for setting in type 45 Specifying type: how to instruct the typesetter 47 Type measurement 49 Copyfitting: how much space will the words take in type? 52 Copyfitting large-size type 55 Proofs 56 Body copy or text faces 57 Sans serif vs. serif faces for body copy 58 Line spacing, leading, interlinear spacing 60 How long should the lines be? 61 Should type be set justified or ragged? 62 Display type 65 Headlines 66 How big should headlines be? 67 What is the best place on the page to put your headline? 67 A few technical terms about headlines 68 Legibility of headlines: all cap, up-and-down style, or downstyle 69 Decks and blurbs 70 Captions, legends, cutlines 70 Catch lines or boldface lead-ins 72 Bylines 73 Tips to help you take better photos for your publication 74 Move in as close as you can 74 Use lenses that will move in close for you 74 Having everything in focus is dull 74 Put the center of interest elsewhere than plumb in the middle 75 Make something dominant in every picture 75 Compose your shots with an awareness of the lines of force 76 Allow moving objects plenty of space 76 Use the rectangle format to best advantage 77 Enliven your picture with foreground interest 77 Pick a background that explains the character of the personality 78 Don't let the background become a nasty surprise 78 Watch out for booby traps 79 Check the edges of the picture in your viewfinder beforeyou shoot 79 Shoot people as the individuals they are 79 Bunch people into tight groups 80 Figure out fresh angles for cliche situations 80 Sunlight is great, except that it makes strong shadows 81 Flashbulbs create shadow monsters on walls 81 Don't blind your subjects by shooting flash too close 81 If you want animated reactions from people, be funny 81 People pictures don't have to be boring 82 The individual mug shot and how to make it more interesting Five commonsense principles for using people pictures 87 Make the best of those unavoidable catalog arrangements 88 Cluster individual shots into close groupings 90 7 Tips to make more effective use of pictures 92 Option 1 : throw the ugly ones out 92 Option 2: make the best of what you've got 92 The pretty picture: beguiling, but off the point 93 The awful picture: depressing, but informative and essential 93 Have the courage needed to use that unexpected image 93 How bleeds create an illusion of size 94 Interrupt the margin by bleeding pictures 95 How the reader interprets meaning through size 96 Why it is wise to crop the picture until it hurts 98 Crop to make pictures work together better 99 Crop for continuity of the horizon in neighboring pictures 101 Edit pictures so one image becomes dominant 103 Help pictorial scenes by cunning page arrangements 103 Cluster small, spotty pictures to give them greater visibility 1 04 Link images to create a cumulative impact 104 How to expose the sense of the story in pictures 1 05 Publish pictures of pictures 105 Bring attention to the important part of the image 1 07 Do things with the edges of the pictures 109 Manipulate the image for symbolic purposes 1 1 2 Use partial silhouetting to emphasize action 1 1 5 Combine words with pictures so 1 + 1 = 3 117 8 inescapable technicalities about pictures 1 20 Must all originals be black-and-white prints? 120 How can you tell that the picture is the right way 'round? 1 22 Why and how do you crop pictures? 123 How do you scale pictures to the size you want them to be? 1 24 How do you inform the cameraman about what you want? 1 27 What will the picture look like when it is reduced? 1 28 What is a halftone? 129 Who makes halftones? 1 29 What are photomechanical variations? 1 30 Whatisalinecut? 131 What is a line conversion? 132 What are screens and shading tints? 132 vn 10 11 llustrations and their substitutes: where to find them, how to use them 1 34 Custom-made art vs. existing art 135 Sources for photography: expensive, cheap, free 1 36 Old engravings in the public domain 1 36 Clip art: its uses and dangers 138 Transfer art and the easy u^ay to become an "illustrator" 1 38 Handwritten notes: art at the end of your arm 1 38 Rubber stamps and the danger of being funny 1 39 Rules and how to use them to advantage 1 40 Boxes: what's in them for you? 141 Nonpictorial odds and ends as illustrations 144 Making mechanicals: a crash course for the uninitiated and disinclined 146 Taking the fear out of mechanicals and where to get advice 147 The tools and materials you cannot work without 147 The need to keep clean 150 Working in miniature 1 50 Making a rough dummy 151 Practical tips on making mechanicals 1 5 1 How to use color effectively (and stay within budget) 1 54 Does the purpose for which color is used affect the choice of color? 1 55 What is the difference between process color and second colors? 1 55 What colors should you use? 157 How much color should you use? 157 Flat color or spot color 157 The difference between pictures with color tint and duotones 157 Running type in color 158 How color separations are made 158 Proofs to check what you'll be getting 1 59 Progressive proofs 160 How to correct color proofs 160 How to get more color for less investment 1 61 12 What you need to know about paper 162 How big is a piece of paper? 162 Basis weight 163 Bulking and thickness 164 Show-through and opacity 164 Brightness 164 Shininess 165 Finishes 165 Colored stock 165 Newsprint 166 Envelopes 167 13 What you absolutely must know about printing, folding, binding, and finishing 1 68 Stenciling it yourself 168 Mimeographing 169 Photocopying and xerography 169 Letterpress 1 70 Offset 170 Gravure 171 Can you tell the difference between offset, letterpress, and gravure? 1 71 What happens after printing? 172 Paper has grain that affects its proper utilization 1 72 How various ways of folding the sheet can be useful 1 72 Binding 174 Diecutting 175 Perforating 175 Laminating 176 Mailing and distribution 176 Index 178 INTRODUCTION The title for this book could have been Graphics Without Fear, except that it was decided that something a bit more positive was needed — hence Mastering. The notion of graphics without fear remains operative, however, because graphic design is not a nest of weird secrets revealed only to some wild-eyed practitioners of an occult art. Instead it is a working tool for working editors and their good right hands — their graphic designers, if they are lucky enough to have them. When graphic design is considered as an end in itself and is done for its own sake, then it is terrifying indeed, for its validity depends entirely on one's subjective "liking," and "liking" is a quality that no one can define and few agree about. All anyone can do is to feel insecure about it and defend one's arbitrary position. Furthermore, such an approach to design is nothing but a quest for superficial beauty: making a publication look good, and pleasing to the eye. It is, of course, possible to develop such cosmetic gloss on any printed product, but that approach was nailed down forever by Oscar Wilde when he referred to the dead fish in the moonlight: "It glistens, but it stinks." When graphic design is regarded as a means to an end, then it is no longer self-centered art-for-art's-sake, but rather an outward-looking technique-for-communication's-sake — and that is a very different kettle of fish that smells delicious. As such, it becomes accessible to anyone: those who originate the product as well as those who receive it. It is this aspect of design that Mastering Graphics deals with. Because the book is based on common sense, you will find that without fear is not some bombastic claim but a statement of simple fact. Graphic design is a functional response to specific, realistic problems that can be simple and quantifiable (such as how to shoehorn too many words into too small a space) or esoteric and hard to define (such as how to give your publication the character appropriate to its purpose and readership). Yet at neither end of the spectrum is graphic design an arcane art. At the simple end, all you need do is count up your total number of characters and do some elementary math. At the esoteric end, finding your ideal solution may take a little longer, but it is no more difficult: all you need do is to break that apparent enormity into its component parts and then proceed to make one small decision for each. In both cases — the simple and the complex — you make your judgments based on facts and options that are accessible to all. The result may look like "art," but you will know perfectly well that your decisions had little to do with your artistic talent or training (or lack thereof). Your decisions had everything to do with sound editorial thinking: the capacity to analyze and make judgments based on logic and common sense for the sake of the product and the story. Graphic design in publications exists on two levels that are interconnected, yet quite separate: (1) the character of the product as a whole, and (2) the successful communication of the ideas inherent in its parts. The first aspect has to do with what the object looks like and how the stories leap off the page into the reader's mind; or, how you recognize the product from page to page and issue to issue and how memorable or exciting your readers perceive the content to be. The character of the product as a whole is created from the choices you and/or your designer make that fuse into a mix that is particular to your product. It consists of many factors such as: the weight, color, texture, and snap of the stock you use; the page size; the ink color; the proportions of the margins around the page; the column structure in the live area of your page; the texture, color, contrast, and patterning of the type you use for the body copy, display, and other areas of typography; the style of the standing art used for logos and other graphic elements; the format of the many elements recurring from issue to issue such as covers, contents, editorial, and so forth; the style of illustrations; the handling of photos . . . and many more. Such choices are made from a nearly infinite variety of possibilities and are influenced by wholly practical considerations such as what your suppliers can offer in the way of services and materials, press size, number of copies to be printed, method of distribution, as well as the overriding question of budgets . . . and so forth. They are also influenced by criteria that are much harder though no less necessary to define, such as the average age of your readers, the degree of their visual/verbal sophistication, the purpose of the publication . . . and so on. When you know what your problems are and base your decisions on the right criteria, you can construct a solution that is fitting and elegant. It must be based on a dispassionate analysis of your needs, purposes, and limitations that define the graphic materials you will be using — if you accept as a definition of the word "materials" anything that is visible on the printed page. The resulting mix of those materials will be what makes you "you" . . . your format. You will work with them until you decide to change them. What you decide to do with graphic materials and how you apply your ingenuity to telling individual stories within the restrictions imposed by these materials will be the challenge of that other aspect of graphic design — the communication of ideas inherent in the parts of the publication. First you must attract the potential reader's attention by whatever means you can devise to make the story appear irresistible. Then you must hold it by making your story fascinating; you must get the information across quickly by efficient presentation, and ensure its being memorable by emphasizing that which is significant. You have to make the value of the product apparent to your reader so that it will be anticipated and welcomed as a trusted friend, XI by making it both recognizable as well as packed with useful content. But that is precisely why you have to know what you are doing and why you are doing it the way you are doing it. Flying by the seat of your pants can lead to losing your shirt. That is why this book has been assembled as a compendium of the fundamental practical knowledge you need in order to approach your task fearlessly. It carefully balances the essential technicalities of graphic design and production with suggestions on how to use them effectively. Since it is as dangerous to know too much as too little about any one aspect of the process, the material here has been carefully chosen to give an overview for handling your publication-making responsibly. The book is the result of the 30 years I have been involved in publishing, the last 20 as consultant and lecturer. The truism that a teacher is taught by his pupils is absolutely unassailable: they asked the questions and needed the answers. I have fielded those questions often enough to have learned what the most common fears and insecurities are, and which gaps in knowledge cause them. It is my hope that the answers to the most frequent questions can be found here. If they are not, perhaps I may do my readers an even greater service by telling you not only where to go to find them, but — more importantly — that it is perfectly all right to ask! Nobody has all the answers, and making publications is an extremely complex procedure. It is no wonder that so many people have technical problems as well as more hard-to-solve, editorial ones. To help at least in the area defined as graphics, this book has been divided into a set of logical areas. Refer to the chapter titles to determine the particular area of interest and then scan the headlines that have been placed on the page to help you close in on a narrower topic. This book intentionally has no glossary in the traditional sense, because people seldom use it. Instead, technical terms and concepts are highlighted in boldface in the text so you can find them quickly — and discover their meaning in the context in which they occur. The index is, of course, a cross-referencing guide. One last thought: the tasks we do not like tend to be put off until the last possible moment — when we cannot avoid them any more. Too many word-oriented people fall into this trap when they face the task of turning those words and thoughts into marks on paper that communicate to readers. Because they are unsure of themselves, because they do not know what they are doing, and because they are afraid, they postpone it until the task becomes a last-minute overnight nightmare. You cannot avoid doing the layout forever; isn't it wiser to get on with it in good time, so you can develop a solution that will s/ng? When you discover how logical and easy it really is, who knows? You may even become as fascinated by the way your product appears as by its content and writing. At that point you will become a fully rounded communicator. Now with respect to this book: it has some 480 line illustrations if you count typographic examples as "illustrations." Please don't check up on the number: I made some arbitrary decisions as to what constitutes a separate illustration and what doesn't, in trying to come up with the total. Besides, who cares? Suffice it to say that there are a lot of them. There are also some 80 halftones. And reams of words. Assembling all this stuff would have been a daunting undertaking, had 1 not been fortunate to have the help of several skilled and indispensable professionals: Mary L. Young transcribed the tape into legible typescript (which must have been some task, given my propensity for disjointed complexity and seemingly endless verbosity). Betty Sun and Iris Topel edited the manuscript with insight and diplomacy: they got rid of the obfuscations and circumlocutions together with most of my funnies. They clarified obscurities and challenged some of my rasher assertions. They did it all with extraordinary patience, for this is a rather unusual book in terms of bookmaking: the author didn't just write and illustrate it, but he also oversaw the typesetting and then assembled the mechanicals himself. So the proper control of consistency, which is a normal part of an editor's responsibilities, gently evaporated. I acknowledge their self-control with such frustrations. You see, I enjoy playing with this marvelously malleable material that typography and illustration and space are to such an extent, that I make decisions about detailing on one page that may be quite different from a similar situation on another page. So when you notice such inconsistencies, blame the author: he was having fun. Blame him also for any mistakes — the editors did their best under unusually trying circumstances. The typesetting was done by J&J Typesetters in Norwalk, CT. They are a joy to work with. The stills from old movies are used by kind permission of the Still File Collection. Other photos don't deserve crediting: they are supposed to be bad, and I have little difficulty taking such pictures myself. My thanks to Carl Moreus of Norwalk, CT, for the use of his photomechanical conversions on pages 130-131. My thanks, also, to Helen Einhorn for overseeing the excellent production of this book. Without my Clarissa, I would not have had the courage to tackle this monster. I must also thank my four sons: Charles, with his Caroline, Alexander, Gregory, and Christopher. Each in his own way is cause for paternal pride. I know they want me to dedicate this book to the memory of KW. Westport, CT May 1983 Which will you choose: newsletter magazine magapaper, magtab or tabloid? Let's assume that you are faced with putting out a publication. You are then very likely to have a stack of publications sitting on your desk: big ones, little ones, fat and colorful ones, thin and floppy ones, newspaperlike ones, and flamboyant annual-reportlike ones — and the prospect of making your own is terrifying. How can you possibly do something like that? Don't be overwhelmed by the quantity or the variety. Instead, go through the mound again and weed out everything that doesn't feel right. Keep those pieces that seem to have the right character for your needs and your audience and that are, therefore, to your liking. Elsewhere in this book, the verb "to like" is seldom used because subjective liking, which is based on an emotional response, must be supplanted by logic, strategic planning, and rational decisions when you put your publication together. You must know what you're doing and why you're doing it that way. But, for now, your intuitive feeling of rightness, expressed in terms of "liking," is a valid and valuable tool to use. When you've narrowed the field you may well decide that a modest, single-page, typewritten newsletter is what you should be doing — fine! You can forget all about magazine formats and newspaper makeup! Or you may have gravitated toward a more newspaperlike product: a tabloid with all its hard-hitting, newsy flavor — fine! You've taken the first major step in your publication-making process. Your ultimate choice, however, will need to take three factors into account. It is hard to make intelligent generalizations about these factors because their specifics are so variable, but you should know about them and figure them into your equation before you commit yourself to a final choice of format. 1. The availability of suppliers in your vicinity who have the right machinery to produce the kind of product you'd like. 2. Some idea of the way your product will be distributed, for that may well affect both costs and the physical limitations within which you'll have to work. 3. The availability of enough money to create the very best version of the product you'd like to have. Clearly, some are cheaper to make than others. It is far better to produce a first-rate version of a cheaper kind than a shoddy version of a more expensive kind. Only common sense and discussions with your suppliers can give you the information you need to base your decisions on. Those are three practical considerations that must be made. To make your life even more complicated, there are three more fundamentals you must also absorb at this early stage of your publishing career, if you are to succeed. They are not practical, but without them you cannot muster the intellectual freedom you need to do the job right. 1. Forget everything you ever learned about the way reports are supposed to be done. Anyone who has ever submitted a paper to the English teacher in high school had to put his or her name in the top right-hand corner, align the date below it, center the title in all capitals on the page with a line under it, place the bibliography at the end and footnotes on the page where the reference occurs, and so on — you know what I mean. Such patterning is one of the useful disciplines of school and perfectly valid for what it is. It is even useful for doing college papers. But publishing is a broader world where such rules or guidelines don't exist. Clear your mind of those cobwebs. 2. Don't think that there are any correct ways of doing anything. There aren't. There are traditions. There are rules of thumb whose application may or may not be appropriate. There are comfortable ways of doing things that have been developed over the years and that are effective in one product but disastrous in another. There are endless slogans about never setting type in all capitals, about italics in bulk being hard to read, about trapped space being anathema, about big headlines having to go at the top of the page, and so on ad nauseam. Slogans are slogans and embody only a sliver of truth. There are also lots of books that tell you what you must always or never do if you hope to do it right. Nonsense. There is only one right way: Think the problem through, decide on the editorial point you're trying to make, then express it in the appropriate physical format, be it for a single story or an entire publication. If the form grows out of the content, you'll have succeeded in finding the optimal way of communicating your meaning — which is the purpose of this whole business to start with. 3. See beyond the beguiling pictures when you examine other people's publications. Look beyond or behind them to notice the structure of the pages, the rhythms used to assemble the whole piece, the patterning and repetitive elements used, the length of the stories, the way headlines are used, the variety of subjects covered. It is one of the hardest things to learn to do because even bad pictures are so fascinating. And if the samples of publications you have gathered are exciting (which they probably are, otherwise you wouldn't have kept them), chances are the writing and subject matter are equally alluring. It is hard to resist getting involved in these publications, and their very capacity to draw in even those disinterested in the subject is the mark of their excellence. Resist it if you want to become a dispassionate, professional analyzer. But for now, shelve all the worries about suppliers and finances as well as about not knowing how to begin, and concentrate on the pile of stuff on your desk. To help you analyze the various characteristics of formats, here is a short overview of the three basic types. Obviously there are hybrids as well as unique publications, which attract much attention by virtue of their uniqueness. Doubtless there are several of such types in your pile. There's no reason why you should not depart from the standard formats. Be aware, however, that what looks simple can turn out to be quite tricky to achieve; and every time you do something special, it is likely to cost you both aggravation and money. So here are the fundamentals, if only for comparison. Newsletters What a multitude of sins this term encompasses! It is so often misused that it is almost meaningless: it means whatever you want it to mean. It describes a publication of limited circulation that is essentially informative in nature and that is published often or seldom, in a format that varies from the simplest to the most complex. For our purposes, let's return to the original definition: a newsletter is a simple medium that is easy to produce and probably one of the most effective to ever have been invented, because it is forthright and unassuming. A true newsletter is simple, informal, relaxed. Its effectiveness lies in the illusion it creates of being a person-to-person letter. It should be quick to read and full of news (although what constitutes news is arguable, if it is news to the recipient, then news it is). It should be written in a series of short paragraphs that summarize events and bring out their significance to the recipient. Longer items are, of course, perfectly acceptable, but the longer they are, the less "newsy" the product appears. To be a true newsletter, it needs to look like news and be edited down to the essentials: the who, what, where, how, and when — and why the reader should need to know about it. It ought also to look informal and inexpensive, unpretentious, not sloppy or messy, but relaxed and unassuming, in order to create that atmosphere of one-to-one personal communication. When typewritten, its informal character and "inside-scoop" feeling can best be communicated. If it is typewritten, then it ought not to have typeset headings. Otherwise the image that readers typically have in mind of the editor batting out the latest hot news on the typewriter (or word processor) will be destroyed if visual elements obviously not generated on a typewriter are added to the mix. By all means have a logo set in type and run it off in color to create a letterhead on which the typescript can then be imposed. That reinforces the personal quality of the newsletter. But inserting headlines in type is something else. Because it is a "letter," its page size is probably the standard 8y2" x 11". The simplest newsletter is, of course, a single sheet. Two sheets stapled together in the top-left corner are the next step. From there you can have several other variations of physical format — but eight pages is about the maximum for a plain newsletter. r=1 r^ The next step up the scale is when the ambitious editor becomes design conscious and yearns for something more formalized, more expensive looking, more valuable, more "finished." So the page is split into two columns, and the copy is retyped several times so that columns are made neat on both left- and right-hand edges (justified) instead of unaligned, which is the way the machine naturally produces lines of type. An executive typewriter may even be used in order to create an aura of sophistication. That soon gives way to rejecting the typewriter's directness and large scale, in favor of cold-type typesetting, the rationalization being that you can get more on the page. Soon, instead of a straightforward newsletter, you have the poor cousin of a magazine — set three columns per page, with headlines in contrasting sans-serif type, and — the ultimate development — pictures. At this point, longer stories that are no longer news-oriented but rather analytical or descriptive in nature shoulder their way into the product, and you have a mini-magazine that doesn't quite come off. And it doesn't quite come off because the techniques of one medium have been applied (wrongly) to another medium. Using slick stock and fancy tricks to "catch the reader" is inappropriate to true newsletters, whose entire character is properly predicated on the assumption that their readers are predisposed to reading because they are vitally interested and want to know the latest news. Magazines have to "sell" their stories by bringing out their content through complex headline/deck/text relationships as well as graphic/photographic/layout manipulations. Newsletters don't need such trickery because their readers are already sold on the importance of the content. Therefore such flamboyance is misapplied and turns the newsletter into something else. Magazines Although there are small ones made to fit the pocket (6" x 8") and bigger ones (9" wide by up to 12" high), the majority of magazines are becoming standardized to 8y4" x 10%" or so. These dimensions are based on the smallest page size one can use to accommodate the standard 7" X 10" ad and allow a workable margin all around. For economic reasons, paper and press sizes are slowly adjusting to this standard. It is also a size that allows for exciting handling of visual elements as well as pedestrian handling of textual matter, as a visit to your local magazine counter will quickly attest. The essence of handling a magazine lies in two factors that are peculiar to the medium. 1. It is small enough for each spread— two facing pages seen together — to be visible as a total unit. It makes one overall impression per spread. 2. It is made up of many pages and therefore becomes an object in three dimensions with many impressions following each other as the reader turns the pages. These essential characteristics can offer tremendous advantages: you can create an artifact that has such personality and unity that the reader will find it valuable, useful, and important. How do you achieve that? By making the most of the sequence of impressions the reader develops as he or she turns the pages and perceives the pages in progression. You establish sequence or progression by repetition, by horizontal alignment from page to page and spread to spread, by the use of minimal variety in typography for maximal effects, by consistency in the placement of like elements on the page, and by standardization of everything that can be standardized. Far from making the object dull, such techniques make it strong, while at the same time giving it impact and recognizability. These are qualities that cannot be built into a newsletter, because eight pages aren't enough to work with. They are also qualities that a newspaper cannot achieve, because its page size is too large. The magazine is made up of groups of pages printed on a flat sheet of paper (form) that is later folded into a signature that is then assembled with other signatures to form the final product. Each signature consists of multiples of 4 pages; 16 pages is the most economical, although 8-page and 12-page signatures are possible. Large magazines are printed in 32-page signatures. Black-and-white pages are printed separately from color pages, because single-color presses are cheaper to run than four-color presses; often the paper stock varies. Thus a magazine often consists of several black-and-white signatures interlaced with or surrounded (wrapped) by color signatures. You need to understand the fundamentals of the physical makeup of the object, in order to make the most of it within its own limitations. The way people hold the product is another factor to take into account. Holding it by the spine the way we do when we first pick it up to examine it, we flip the pages fast; we only see the outside half of the pages because the inside half is hidden. That outside half of the pages, then, is where we ought to put our attention-grabbing material. Later, when the product is studied for the second time, after the potential reader has decided, "Yes, it looks interesting," that inside half is laid bare because the object is then held differently: on the lap, on the desk, folded backward. The page of a typical magazine is usually broken into two or three columns. All dimensions shown are in picas. Some magazines also use a four-column format. 9.5 9.5 9.5 9.5 These are by no means the only patterns although they are most often found, for they fit the sizes of advertisements. Publications that do not have to face the problem of accommodating ads need not restrict their thinking. They should develop other patterns, such as these: Narrower columns can be concentrated toward the center of the spread, allowing a wide outer margin; that precious high-visibility area can then be penetrated by headlines or small pictures or can have pictures extend into it. Or how about taking two columns, centering them down the middle of the page, and giving them ample outer margins to create a quiet, elegant, dignified feeling? Or consider taking three columns per page but making them narrower than the maximum. You then have the option of placing them in two positions on the page: working outward from the gutter, yielding a wide outer margin; or working inward from the outer edge, yielding a wide gutter margin. There are, clearly, lots of different ways of organizing the space at your disposal. The advantage of an unusual arrangement is that it makes the product look different. Not only does the type feel different, but the pictures do too. That is because in the usual two- or three-column makeup, there is an expected sameness to the pages, no matter how hard you may try to be original or even to obtain striking photos. The skeleton to which you are attaching your material forces you to size it according to certain proportions. If the skeleton is ordinary, so will your proportions be. If it is unusual, then the result will look unusual.* If your publication is likely to have a great many photos in it, then it may well be a good idea to work out a column format that encourages a variety of sizes suitable to the variety of pictorial matter you'll want to accommodate. If your page can be so arranged that it remains within a standard, recognizable margin — so the pages hang together clearly — yet allows the live area to be broken into two, three, four, and even five columns, you have a scheme that will be the basis of a product whose interesting expressiveness will be the result of the flexibility of the system. 12.3 12.3 12.3 7 7 7 7 7 *See Jan V. White, 18 Ready-to-Use Grids (Arlington, VA: National Composition Association, 1982). The combinations such a scheme allows — for example, coupling various column widths together to leave empty areas of different proportions — can be both gratifying and enriching. Gratifying, because it lets the material be made to the size the editor deems appropriate for it; enriching, because the journalistic thrust, joined with the visual effect, creates excitement in the product. It says something and says it clearly, at first glance. By the way, breaking up the page into component columns is sometimes thought to be a Big Solution to All Our Problems when it is referred to as a grid. A grid is nothing but a geometrical pattern that divides the area of the page into vertical shapes (columns) and also into horizontal shapes. The columns have already been discussed. It is the additional horizontal ones that make the true grid. They can be coordinated with type lines — individually or in multiples; or they can break the page's height arbitrarily into equal-sized pieces. If the publication is likely to use a lot of photographs, it is good planning to shape those pieces so they will fit the proportion of the photos: 4 to 5 proportion for 4" x 5" photos, 2 to 3 proportion for 35mm photos. Clearly, any arrangement that helps to define the future page design is feasible. It can be as simple as a few lines that define the edges of things ("text up to this point and down to here but no further . . . headlines in this area, decks in there . . .") or as complex as imagination demands. The grid is said to embody some kind of magic that makes it easy to produce the publication and makes it an effective vehicle. Alas, it does no such thing. It is a framework that may or may not fit the material, and insofar as it is better to have a framework than not to have one, it helps. But it is no substitute for thinking, journalism, writing good stories, inventing clever graphics, or getting fine photography. All it provides is a set of slots into which to insert all that material. On the other hand, it is the frame on which the publication's visual character is hung; it helps give identity; it creates consistency from page to page; it speeds work habits; and, of course, it is the forerunner of the coming technology: when page makeup will be done on video terminals, the grid will be universally used. In terms of style, there are four other characteristics that have become essential to true magazine makeup. 1. Space is used actively to create the product's patterns. A newspaper page is expected to be fully packed from side to side, top to bottom. Not so a magazine page (although there are some, such as the newsmagazines, that do fill out the live-matter rectangle as a matter of course). Such an informal approach, whereby white space is utilized actively to focus attention onto the matter the editor deems important, is something that magazine makeup encourages. Unfortunately, this valuable capacity is often unused, because the boss objects to "wasted paper," and because many editors, trained as they are in newspaper journalism, cannot purge themselves of the rigidities imposed on them by newspaper traditions. Interestingly enough, as papers evolve, many magazine techniques are invading the supplements — and that includes the utilization of space as an active element in presentation, instead of as just the passive white background on which the words and pictures get printed. 2. Newsletters plunge right into their contents on the first page. Newspapers run their most important story atop page 1, often above the flag. But magazines are packaged like cornflakes: in a box — between covers. The picture and cover lines become shills and are made irresistibly enticing in order to pull the reader into the product. Obviously, covers also exist to create recognition for the product from issue to issue, so they have to express the publication's personality and be consistent with its policy. The picture that is run on the cover usually has something to do with the major story. Artwork or typographic covers are also sometimes used, and they can be highly successful as sales tools if they are well executed. It is much easier and safer to use a good photo, though. 3. Magazine pages have their center of importance at the top; that's where the eye goes to find the important matter. The foot of the page is much less important. It follows, then, that it is not necessary to make the bottom of the page always precisely squared off and neat. True, filling columns down to the bottom margin makes it look tidier, but so few people become aware of that area of the page that you can get away with inaccuracies without worry. Certainly it is foolish to insert space between paragraphs in order to fill out the columns, for that destroys the flow of the typography — and to what end? Perhaps some theoretical principle of which few are aware. Certainly a newspaper page made up in the traditional, full arrangement has to have a neat outline, and there the lack of alignment across the foot of the page looks noticeably messy. But newspapers are a different case altogether, and it is unwise to transfer the necessities of one medium to another. It is much wiser to make a virtue of necessity — for example, by making the foot of the page deliberately staggered or scalloped, as long as the inequalities are sufficiently large to make it quite evident that this is what you intended to do and that it is not a mistake. 4. In general, the most successful presentation is one whose spreads are devoted entirely to one story. There the medium's proportions are used optimally and concentrate the reader's attention most effectively. The page size evidently coordinates comfortably with longer stories. A newspaper page could not be as successful because it is far too large; the scale would be wrong. By the same token, magazines that crowd a lot of small items onto a page newspaper style can never succeed to the degree that newspapers can, simply because of the smallness of the page they are working with. Magapapers, magtabs, and tabloids Here we are dealing with a much larger object. The normal dimension is 11" wide and anywhere from 14" to 17" high. Usually it is run on newsprint (to get the newspaper feel as well as to make it less expensive to produce), although the format can be used on heavy, white, fine stock too. The tabloid is the basic format. What makes the tabloid into a magtab or magapaper is that it has one more fold and, because of that fold, a smaller cover. That sounds complicated, so here it is in diagrammatic form. The back page of the tabloid becomes the cover for the folded piece; the upper part is the front cover, the lou/er part the back cover. The reader sees three sequential elements upon receipt of the publication: first, the small front cover; second, the back cover; third, opening it all up, the full tabloid-size first page. The word magtab comes from magazine (when folded) and tabloid (when opened up). (Nobody calls it a tabzine, thank goodness.) Magapaper, similarly, is magazine and newspaper. Inside, they are all basically the same. Assembled newspaper style in rigid columns, they fill out every square inch of available space; or assembled in magazine style, they have greater freedom of placement and sizing, and often weave ample white space into startling graphic arrangements. Clearly the contents should determine the choice of presentation style: news stories in a news section can and should be presented in a style natural to them; on the other hand, long, analytical stories that are not news-oriented deserve a different handling. There is no reason why there cannot be a variety of handling within the same issue; such variety helps to enrich the product visually, and it can help the reader realize the variety of matter packed in the Issue. This kind of variety (in form as in content) grows out of the inner needs of the material. It is an organic, natural development, and as such it must fit the stories — and the vehicle — much more believably than the sort of extraneous variety that one finds injected into a product for its own sake: fashionable headline type; peculiar text block treatments; fussy details that no one notices except the people who put the product out, such as differences in treatment of subheads in copy; and so forth. Magazine-style layouts work best when a dominant element becomes noticeable at first glance. It is usually a large photo, but it can be anything else appropriate to the story: a large headline, an important chart or map. What deserves prominence for editorial reasons is given that visibility in order to create immediate communication. Newspaper-style layouts imply putting several comparatively short but unrelated items on the same page. Since the newspaper page — full size or tabloid size — is much larger than a magazine page, it is seldom seen as a totality. The two-page spread of a newspaper is practically never seen that way: it cannot be done without standing back too far. Instead, the page is examined by the reader in a series of jumps. Therefore newspaper design needs to be contemplated from a very different point of view. Its composition is much more complex. Unfortunately, because it is organized in columns, the usual approach is to weave the material through from column to column so that the stories meld into each other; only by reading and concentration can we determine where one ends and the next one begins. y)lil^lli;l»\MUiUiiA^MyHIJmMU- (MtMMUjXM^ WIMJifJ^